Marvel x Genshin: Mavuika, The Sun Goddess Rules Asgard — Chapter 132

Chapter 132: The Woman Who Broke the Internet

Dr. Banner stood in the middle of the living room, looking considerably better than he had just hours before. Though his face was still pale, a ghostly pallor clinging to his skin, the violent trembling had at least subsided.

Mavuika rose gracefully from the sofa.

“I’ll be going now,” she announced.

Tony and Banner turned to her in unison.

“Leaving already?” Tony arched a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Not staying for breakfast? I just had Jarvis order a fresh batch of bagels.”

“There’s no need,” Mavuika said, shaking her head. The movement sent waves through her fiery hair. “I’m going back to catch up on some sleep.”

A curious, almost unreadable expression flickered across Tony’s face.

“…Catch up on sleep? You actually need to sleep?”

His tone was thick with disbelief. In the sixteen years he had known Mavuika, he had never once seen her show the slightest sign of fatigue. No matter the hour or the circumstance, she always appeared as a wellspring of boundless energy. Besides, she was the sun goddess of Asgard, a literal figure from Norse mythology. Did such beings even require something as mundane as sleep?

Mavuika met his gaze, the corners of her lips curling into a faint, knowing smile.

“Of course I do,” she replied, a hint of teasing lacing her voice. “I’m a girl, after all. Getting enough sleep is essential.”

The corner of Tony’s mouth twitched.

“Fine,” he conceded, taking a deep breath. “Then go back and get some good sleep. Come back when you wake up. I’ll have Jarvis prepare the coffee and bagels for then.”

Mavuika nodded, then turned her attention to Banner.

“Get some rest,” she said, her voice carrying a calm, reassuring authority. “Although Tony never stops talking, he’s a decent man. If you need anything, you can go to him.”

Banner nodded, opening his mouth to form a ‘thank you,’ but Mavuika had already turned and was walking toward the penthouse terrace.

Golden-red flames, brilliant and pure, bloomed from beneath her feet. The next second, she launched herself into the air, a searing comet against the pale blue of the morning, and vanished.

The living room fell silent for several long moments.

Tony walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows, his eyes fixed on the point in the sky where the streak of light had disappeared. He let out a soft sigh.

“She said ‘catch up on sleep,'” he muttered, more to himself than to Banner. “I really wonder what a goddess dreams about.”

Banner came to stand behind him, his own gaze lost in the vastness of the sky.

“…Who is she, exactly?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

Tony turned his head, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “A friend,” he said simply. “A very good friend.”

He paused, the weight of his next words filling the space between them. “And a very, very powerful friend. You were lucky today, Banner. Incredibly lucky that she was the one who found you.”

Banner remained silent.

Lucky? Perhaps that was the word for it. If she hadn’t intervened, he would likely still be lying in the smoldering ruins of Harlem. He would have been captured by the military, locked away in some subterranean laboratory, and become General Ross’s pet project for endless, agonizing research.

But now, he was here. Standing in Tony Stark’s palatial villa, wearing borrowed clothes, with a cup of freshly brewed coffee waiting for him and breakfast on the way.

Yes, this was indeed lucky.

“…Thank you,” he said, the words directed as much to the woman who had flown away as to the man beside him.

Tony waved a dismissive hand. “Don’t mention it. Come on, have some coffee. After that, we can talk about your Gamma Ray research.”

The warmth in Banner’s expression vanished, replaced by a guarded tension.

Seeing the shift, Tony immediately held up his hands. “Not now! You rest first. Eat breakfast, get your strength back. Scientific research can’t be rushed, I get it.”

The next day.

Mavuika was jolted awake by the insistent buzzing of her phone.

She blinked her eyes open, a disoriented haze clouding her mind. A glance out the window revealed that the sky had already darkened; she had slept straight through to the afternoon without realizing it. On her bedside table, her phone was vibrating so violently it threatened to dance right off the edge. The screen was lit up, displaying dozens of unread messages.

She picked it up, her thumb swiping across the screen.

Tony: You’re famous.

Tony: The entire internet is looking for you.

Tony: Do you need me to arrange for an agent?

Tony: Never mind. Knowing you, you’d find that incredibly annoying.

Tony: Banner is still here with me. By the way, his Gamma Ray theory is genuinely fascinating.

Mavuika scrolled past Tony’s stream-of-consciousness texts and continued down the list of notifications. That was when she saw the news alerts.

New York Post: “MONSTER BATTLE ERUPTS IN HARLEM! MYSTERIOUS RED-HAIRED WOMAN DEFEATS GIANT WITH ONE HAND!”

Daily News: “‘SUN WOMAN’ SAVES HARLEM — WITNESSES CLAIM SHE EMITTED A BLINDING GOLDEN LIGHT!”

Wall Street Journal: “MILITARY CONFIRMS: CAPTAIN BLONSKY ILLEGALLY INJECTED EXPERIMENTAL SERUM, CAUSING DOZENS OF CASUALTIES; MYSTERIOUS WOMAN’S IDENTITY REMAINS UNKNOWN.”

Below the headlines were screenshots from social media. SunWoman was at the top of the Twitter trending list, followed by HarlemMonster in second, and MysteriousRedHairedWoman in third.

Curiosity piqued, Mavuika tapped on one of the links.

It was a news report from the previous night. The footage opened with a sweeping aerial shot from a news helicopter. Harlem was a disaster zone, choked with thick, acrid smoke. Overturned cars littered the streets like discarded toys, and fires raged, their flames licking at the sky. The camera then zoomed in, its lens focusing on a hulking, yellowish-brown giant—the Abomination.

It was rampaging through the streets, its roars echoing through the concrete canyons. It snatched a car and hurled it effortlessly into the distance, where it slammed into an apartment building, causing a section of the wall to collapse in a shower of brick and dust.

The footage then cut to a shaky, ground-level perspective. In the chaotic frame, a little girl in a pink hoodie stood frozen in the middle of the road, her eyes wide with terror and brimming with tears, utterly lost.

Then, a golden-red light descended from the heavens.

Mavuika landed softly in front of the child. She raised a hand, and with a single, slender finger, she intercepted the Abomination’s colossal, descending palm.

The comment section below the video was a firestorm of disbelief and awe.

“I’ve watched this three times and I still don’t understand how she did it.”

“Is that a god???”

“Who IS that woman? She’s way too strong!”

“Someone said she’s a Valkyrie from Norse mythology?”

“Bullshit, since when do Valkyries have golden flames!”

“Who cares who she is, she saved my cousin! My cousin was on that street when it happened!”

“Hero! A true hero!”

“Those useless military grunts fought that thing for ages and couldn’t even scratch it, and she stopped it with ONE FINGER!”

“SunWoman, the name fits perfectly!”

Mavuika set her phone down and leaned back against the headboard. Going out in public was likely going to be troublesome from now on. Fortunately, she wouldn’t be staying on Midgard for much longer.

Once Hela was freed, she could finally return to Asgard with her sister.

At the thought, a pang of longing struck her. She missed her Father and Mother, and even the boisterous Thor and mischievous Loki. She wondered what they were all doing right now.

With a sigh, Mavuika picked up the remote and turned on the television.

Every channel was dedicated to the Harlem incident. They discussed the Abomination, the Hulk, and, of course, the mysterious woman who had ended the conflict.

A news anchor in a sharp suit spoke with passionate conviction to the camera. “…No matter who she is, no matter where her abilities come from, one thing is certain: she saved countless lives! She is a true hero!”

Online, the public had turned into a legion of amateur detectives, digging for any clue they could find.

Someone unearthed a grainy racing video from a few years back. It showed a red-haired female racer on a motorcycle, tearing down a winding mountain road with stunning speed and skill. Though her face was obscured by a helmet, her long, golden-red hair, streaming behind her like a banner of fire, was identical to Mavuika’s.

Someone else posted a blurry photograph taken at the entrance of a museum, capturing a red-haired woman as she walked through the doors.

Others began to analyze her “abilities.” Slow-motion replays of the fight showed a golden radiance enveloping her as she blocked the Abomination’s fist. It wasn’t ordinary fire; it was something purer, a warmer, more concentrated form of energy.

The name “Sun Woman” began to stick, accepted by more and more people as the perfect descriptor.

On social media, fan art had already begun to appear: striking images of a woman with long, flowing, golden-red hair, wreathed in solar flames, standing as a guardian in the ruins while protecting a small child.